Addiction. Ain't it a bitch. I was injured badly when I served on active duty with the Navy. While hauling USMC tanks to the beach during a training operation on board a landing craft not unlike the boats that stormed the beaches in the Pacific and Normandy during WW2, one tank broke loose and crushed me against the wall of the boat. The bulkhead for the other Swabbies out there. Yeah, me between 52 tons of war machine and a three quarter inch thick sheet of steel. Guess who lost?
Great training and the best care anywhere saved my life. But it left me with one thing I wish it had not. Maybe two, there is one hell of a scar. But I came out of the accident with an addiction to opiates. On and off for 28 years I have battled this demon and always winning after lengthy battles. But this time the doctor screwed up. Instead of prescribing me a certain dosage it was written as three times the amount. 100mg of morphine sulfate, a drug that gives me deathly nausea, instead of the 30mg tabs that would have been perfect. This mistake was not caught for two months. I was also given four 10mg oxycodones to take daily. Usually I took between 2-4 a day and always had at least 15 or more left when I picked up the next prescription. So I had plenty of extras locked away in the safe.
After an argument it was agreed I would no longer be his patient and he purposely did not give me enough to adequately cut down in the proper manner. No worries though. I have been through this maybe ten times. And always win out. But this is different. I had never been on such a high dose and morphine to boot. The only thing more addicting is oxycontin. A drug I passed on after trying years ago. The withdrawal is terrible from this. In a week I have already cut down to 20% of what I was taking and am paying the price. From that high dosage to now taking one 15mg morphine tab a day and three 5mg oxycodones.
My body feels like a quivering bowl of jello. Both legs feel like they have restless leg syndrome. Cannot seem to get comfortable. And sleep? Snippets fits well there. An hour here, half hour there and all the tossing and turning. Another day or two and my body will get use to this amount of opiate and I will start feeling like myself again. Yet the worst is still to come. Five days later I will cut that in half. Then I will start to get sick. Physically sick. Unable to keep food down, living on coffee and cigarettes with the occasional sip of water. And all the other symptoms described earlier will intensify. Threefold. And that will last for another 72 hours before my body starts to get use to it. But those three days will just be the first Circle of Dante's hell.
A week after that is when I should stop them all together. That is when I will enter the depths of the soul you never want to go. I will be sick. Junkie sick. Will feel like a heroin addict who is badly in need of a fix. The next 96 hours will be hard. All of those withdrawal symptoms will hit me like a stock car hitting a brick wall at 180 mph. The worst part? Knowing I can open the safe, pop a pill then 30 minutes later feel just dandy. But I want to stop. My injury is funny. It hurts but most of the time like a bad slide into second base I can walk it off or use some type of physical therapy to ease the pain until it dissipates.
I took the easy way out and went the pill route this time. This doctor got me thinking I was injured worse than I was and fed my addiction with his mistake. It is going to be an interesting two or three weeks but I will come out of it only a little worse for wear. Anything else the lawyers can work out.